Papers of Sir Edwin Porter Arrowsmith

Correspondence, reports, memoranda and other papers relating to service in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana), Turks and Caicos Islands, Dominica, Basutoland (now Lesotho) and the Falkland Islands.

Sir Edwin Porter Arrowsmith, CMG (1950) KCMG (1959), was born on the 23 May 1909 and educated at Cheltenham College and Trinity College, Oxford. He was an Assistant District Commissioner in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1932), and in various District posts (1933-1938), before transferring to the British West Indies, where he was Commissioner of Turks and Caicos Islands (1940-1946) and Administrator in Dominica (1946-1952). Arrowsmith returned to Africa for a 5 year period in 1952, as Resident Commissioner in Basutoland (1952-1956), before becoming Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Falkland Islands (1957-1964) and High Commissioner of the British Antarctic Territory (1962-1964).

Arrowsmith was Director of the Overseas Services Resettlement Bureau (1965-1979); a member of the Council of St. Dunstan's (1965-ca.1992); Chairman (1970-1985), later Vice-President (1985-ca.1992) of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind; and President (1977-1983), later Vice-President (1984-ca.1992) of the Freshwater Biological Association. Arrowsmith died on the 10 July 1992.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Administrative/Biographical History compiled with reference to Who Was Who.

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

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